She leaned against the desk, folding her arms over an emerald-green apron that matched the stone in her wedding band.
“I’m heading back home,” Hanna said.
“Leaving behind something good?”
Hanna sucked her lip between her teeth, biting back the wave of tears that crashed against her ribs. She was plagued by them now, unable to hold any of it back.
“I was hoping you could do me a favor,” she said. “Can I get weekly deliveries of sunflowers to this address? On Wednesdays? I can put my card on file.”
The woman took the sticky note that had Sara's address scribbled across it. She didn’t know why she needed to do it. It wasn’t like Milo was going to forget her, but she liked the idea of still being present at wing-and-movie night.
“Whatever it is you’re leaving, I hope they regret it,” the woman said quietly, ringing up the order.
“Not as much as I will,” Hanna said back, her throat tightening.
She flicked her eyes over Hanna’s face, softening at the sadness she found there.
“It’ll come back to you, honey. Love always does.”
TWENTY-THREE
It was too hot in Phoenix.
It wasn’t a new observation, but it was a new point to add to the list of reasons she no longer thought of Arizona as home. Home was eight hundred miles north, probably two whiskeys deep, forgetting about her.
Hanna dropped her suitcase in the living room and looked around. Her sublet had cleared out and things were tidy, it was almost as if she'd never left. She walked through the house, mentally cataloguing all of the projects she still wanted to accomplish, and stopped in front of the bathroom mirror.
“Shit,” she whispered. She’d really cracked through rock bottom and discovered an entirely new subterranean city to explore.
She flopped onto her bed, the cicadas outside singing a dilapidated hymn, and pulled out her phone to fire off a text—the first item she needed to cross off of her very long to-do list.
It took everything in her to get out of bed and take a real shower, not just a passable one. Even with clean hair and a washed face, she barely looked like herself in the mirror.
She was just so tired.
For the first time, Hanna didn’t fuss with her makeup or hair to convince Olivia that she had her life together. Instead, she pulled on the cleanest pair of leggings she had at her disposal and Milo’s flannel. As she slid it over her head, she was back standing in his apartment, her suitcases packed, saying a tearful goodbye on the promise that she’d be back eventually.
For what, neither of them had an answer.
She threw her hair into a bun and found some sunglasses. While she may have been ready to let Olivia see her like that, she didn’t need her local barista to ask questions.
An iced coffee and a good cry in the car later, she sat on Olivia’s plush beige couch.
“So,” Olivia said, holding a pen to her lips. “This is the real Hanna.”
“What do you mean?”
“In all the time we’ve seen each other, you’ve only ever been perfectly put together.”
Of course, Olivia clocked that immediately.
“I didn’t have it in me today.”
“That’s okay! It wasn’t a criticism. I’m thrilled you’ve taken such a good step!”
Hanna scoffed, adjusting the cuff of his shirt around her wrist.
“This is what a good step looks like?’
